The week before Christmas, Lori Boles was told that her director's job of 11 years was ending. In September, Everett Presley was told that his manufacturing job of 29 years was done. For a year now, Martha Williams has been looking for work, after an Italian cheese consortium closed its U.S. office.

They are among the stories beyond the numbers: From January 2008 to January 2009, the Syracuse area lost 2,000 jobs.

Professionals with long employment histories are out of work: ex-workers at Merrill Lynch and Crucible, a paralegal and the director of a county child care council. Last week, some 2,000 people attended a Career Connections job fair at the Oncenter. In a steady line all day, hundreds waited to meet with job counselors, who critiqued their resumes.

Besides cutting expenses and drawing down savings, many of the laid-off workers said they struggle to stay confident. They look for jobs and glimmers of hope in an environment that seems to offer little of either. They face a market in which the rules have changed.

"When I was young I would burn the shoe leather, and if you didn't have a hole in your shoe by the end of the day, you weren't looking too hard," said Presley, 52, of Clay. "Now it's by the keyboard. You're sending it off to some unknown place. You're not meeting people. You're not sure whether they're looking at your resume."

Presley worked 29 years for B.G. Sulzle, a company in Salina that made suture needles and once employed 700. The company was bought by Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, which slashed its work force and moved the operation to Puerto Rico. What hit them? Surgeons rely more now on glue, tape and staples than suture needles, Presley said.

For Boles, 51, of Oswego, it's the first time in her life she's been out of work unwillingly.

"It was a blow to the ego, even though I know it was really through no fault of my own," said Boles, former director of the Oswego County Child Care Council. Boles, who calls herself frugal, has been using her savings to help pay her mortgage and car loan.

"I've been debating when I get my income tax return (refund) whether I want to pay my car or save money for a rainy day." She paused. "I'm in a rainy day."

The job search has been no easier for Silas Rader, 24, of Clay, who graduated in May from the University of Buffalo, majoring in journalism, photography and psychology. He thought five years with his college newspaper would fast-track him into a journalism job.

"I misled myself," he said. "It is not a college campus out here."

Since December, when Merrill Lynch started cutting workers in the staggering, nearly century-old institution, Beth Sellers, 43, of Syracuse, privately took attendance at work in Syracuse, checking if anyone had lost his job. Two weeks ago, she lost hers.

On a Friday morning she was called into her supervisor's office and told to leave.

"I thanked them for the 23 years of experience and held it together and continued out the door," she said, holding back tears. "It definitely puts it (the recession) in a different light. You know you're not alone. There's a lot of people out there in the same position."

When he lost his 15-year job as a tenor with the New York City Opera last April, Christopher Jackson made a hard decision -- he moved with his wife and two children to Liverpool, his hometown, to be near a family-support system and a lower cost of living. At 38, Jackson is pursuing a career change that will make him more marketable.

"Maybe music education," he said.

He'll need more schooling, but in the meantime he's looking for anything for income.

"It's difficult. You have a master's degree and you go to a temporary agency and they say, 'You obviously don't want to be in a factory.' But at some point you have to say, 'OK, maybe I will go into a factory or get some kind of manual labor position until something opens up.' You have to assess what you are willing to do and what it pays, to survive."

Paul C. Lapsley is thinking about braces. He lost his 11-year job at Crucible four weeks ago, just as a foreign exchange student from Korea moved in with his family. One of his three daughters has braces. They cost $120 a month. Another daughter will soon need them.

Lapsley, of Salina, worked as an information technologies specialist. Friends and associates have been offering him temporary work, and Lapsley plans to become officially certified in several computer software systems.

"It's the first time (a recession) has directly affected me, and it stings," he said. "I have a good support system at my church and with my family."

The job seekers say it's easy to feel isolated, so it's important to stay connected.

"It's hard to keep the spirits up," Presley said. "After 29 years you start to live and breathe where you work. You miss your old friends. I ran into a few of them today. That keeps my spirits up -- finding out who's going where, who might be hiring. The biggest thing is to try to do this connecting, the networking for a job."

Ken Milligan, 55, of Syracuse, a paralegal who lost his seven-year job with a law firm in December, keeps his three-day-a-week gym routine to help stay positive. He and his wife, who sells real estate, attend fewer movies and have cut back on junk food. Optimism has been their safety net.

"We had meager savings. We were living pretty much paycheck to paycheck," he said. "I doubt if I'll ever really have a pension. We used to joke that when we came to retirement age, we'd become Wal-Mart greeters."

Martha Williams, of Syracuse, has savings.

"Just like that blonde woman on TV (personal finance expert Suze Orman) says, you should always have seven months set aside," Williams said. "I was always a good girl. I had seven months of living expenses put aside."

For 11 years, Williams marketed Parmesan Reggiano cheese.

Without work, she's been stretching her savings -- carefully combining car trips, living with a TV that she has to turn on by poking it with a pen, and using her mother's washer and dryer because hers are broken.

"You just can't buy anything right now," she said.

When he worked, Presley received his spending money from a $40-a-week allowance from his wife. She wanted to maintain that.

"No, no, no, honey. We got to cut back on this, too," he remembers telling her. "You give me only $20. That way, it will keep me motivated to keep looking for a job."

Veronica Schuettenberg, of Manlius, has been seeking work for months. Her husband, who sold automotive supplies, was laid off in January. They have a son in college.

"I know companies can't discriminate because of age, but when they ask for dates -- when you graduated from college, from high school -- I feel sometimes that eliminates you from the candidate group right away," she said.

Williams struggles with the same feeling.

"I colored my hair brown," she said. "I have beautiful gray hair. I loved it. But if they can just think, maybe, I'm two years younger, maybe I'll just have that little bit of an edge."

You can reach Dave Tobin, or any of the job applicants in this story, at dtobin@syracuse.com or 470-3277.